Among recent approaches to political theology, natural law,[1] and the relationship of creation and covenant, David VanDrunen’s books and articles stand at the front of the line. He has cemented himself as a leading scholar on these issues. A Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California, VanDrunen has written extensively on the subject of political theology. Most recently, he has contributed an article in the 9Marks Journal on the role of the Noahic Covenant in human government and previously he has written academic and popular level works on the Noahic Covenant and its ongoing role in establishing his two kingdoms paradigm.
1. For a brief primer on natural law, see Andrew Walker’s explanation of what it is and how it should be used here.
Advocates of two kingdom theology maintain the paradigm is historically sound, biblically grounded, and practically useful in garnering a proper understanding of just how Christians can truly live “in” but not be “of” the world.[2] In short, two kingdoms theology charts a course for the Christian to confess Christ’s lordship over all things, while distinguishing between his civil/spiritual, natural/gracious, earthly/heavenly, outward/inward, kingdoms.
2. David VanDrunen, “The Two Kingdoms and Reformed Christianity: Why Recovering an Old Paradigm is Historically Sound, Biblically Grounded, and Practically Useful,” Pro Rege 40/3 (2012): 31-38.
The purpose of this essay is to evaluate and respond to VanDrunen’s formulation of the Noahic covenant from a Progressive Covenantalist perspective. While Progressive Covenantalism[3] has some agreement with his overall framework, I contend that VanDrunen makes significant errors anthropologically and covenantally which lead to further erroneous theological conclusions. Fundamentally, he wrongly teaches that the Noahic covenant “refracts” or modifies moral/natural law.[4] He arrives at this erroneous conclusion because he conflates covenant and creation into interchangeable concepts.
3. For a brief primer on Progressive Covenantalism, see our Key Points of Definition page.
Though it is tempting to interact with and evaluate the outworking of these theological conclusions on his political theology, I am limiting this discussion to a biblical-theological exploration of VanDrunen’s understanding of the Noahic covenant in keeping with this month’s theme at Christ Over All. I will dig beneath the surface of his public theology, examining central theological presuppositions that have significant ramifications on the modern Reformed two kingdoms paradigm, otherwise known as R2K, for which he is now well-known. My interaction with and response to VanDrunen will provide fertile ground for the future in developing political theology, but before we get there, it is necessary to get the opening chapters of Genesis right.[5]
4. While I am grateful that VanDrunen is clear that he sees this “refraction” of the moral/natural law in the Noahic covenant as “in keeping” with the original creation mandate, this language, as I will argue throughout the rest of this essay, creates more theological problems than it solves.
Keeping Covenant and Creation/Nature Logically Separate
5. This October and November Christ Over All will engage the ongoing discussions surrounding political theology, evaluating various approaches to Christian Nationalism.
Let me begin by highlighting a crucial error VanDrunen makes right from the beginning regarding the biblical covenants. VanDrunen’s anthropology, understanding of the covenants, moral/natural law, etc., turns on the fulcrum that “covenant” and “nature”[6] are interchangeable concepts. He says so in no uncertain terms: “[D]istinguishing the natural and the covenantal in the opening chapters of Genesis is itself a false move that creates a needless dilemma.”[7] Not only is this logic out of step with classical Reformed theology, more importantly, it merges together concepts that must be distinguished for a right understanding of the Bible’s teaching on the covenants in relation to creation and human nature.
6. “Nature” in this case means that which is created or generated, and is therefore not God. For example, this would include trees, the sun, water, houses, people, animals, etc. Moreover, nature communicates the inherent givenness creation has as ordained by God. Nature has a telos, or goal for which it is designed. Covenant then, is the means by which God offers nature the pathway to its fulfillment.
Keeping covenant and nature (i.e., the nature of creation) logically separate is supremely important so that we can speak of how God offers and then empowers those he creates in his image to experience the fullness of his purposes for them. In other words, man in his original state stood in need of covenantal revelation (special revelation on top of man’s natural religious inclination) from God to achieve his divinely ordained destiny as a creature. Herman Bavinck explains that the Reformed confess: “After creating men and women after his own image, God showed them their destiny and the only way in which they could reach it.”[8]
7. David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 84.
This is flatly opposed to VanDrunen, who conflates general (natural) and special (covenantal) revelation into interchangeable concepts in his exposition of Genesis 1-2.[9] Adam in his state of integrity had both the capacity and inclination to know God, but he needed special revelation, which God offered him in the form of a covenant to achieve this fellowship forever.[10]
8. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:571.
With that being said, I aim to show how VanDrunen’s exegesis and application of the Noahic covenant is a sort of test case for why this is so important to get right, because concepts like moral order/natural law and the Noahic covenant itself are distorted due to this error.
9. See VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 80-93.
VanDrunen on the Noahic Covenant
10. One of Bavinck’s future disciples, Cornelius Van Til, captures this well when he articulates, “This additional revelation would be different from that which had preceded it. And the difference would depend definitely upon a self-conscious covenant act of man with respect to the positively communicated prohibition,” “Nature and Scripture,” The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the members of the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary (1946): 255-293.
Because VanDrunen conflates covenant and creation, he then finds license to argue that a future covenant can “refract” or modify elements of previous ones, which means that nature and therefore natural law (since it is interchangeable with covenant according to him) can likewise be altered/modified. Why this matters, as I will unpack in further detail in the next section of this essay, is that this implicates God’s character and seems to make sin out to be substantive insofar as it modifies the very nature of humanity.
VanDrunen’s anthropology is “constituted by three things: human beings’ attributes, commission, and destiny. The idea of human ‘nature’ as a static concept is foreign to Scripture and is thus insufficient theologically. Human nature is a historically dynamic concept that is inherently ethical and eschatologically oriented.”[11] One important conclusion flowing from this framework is that human nature is dynamic and covenantally mediated. The image of God in this system “is not a static ontological reality, but a dynamic, historically/teleologically, eschatologically oriented office that entails being equipped for a task, performing the task, and attaining a goal.”[12]
11. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 75.
In VanDrunen’s framework, human nature is preserved in this fallen condition, and is neither bound to the protological mandate in Genesis 1:28 (first creation) or the eschatalogical goal for which humanity was destined (new creation). He explains, “Therefore, it seems best, I suggest, to speak not of human beings having lost the image (as if God took away some constitutive faculty or moral responsibility from them) but of human beings as corrupted image-bearers . . . no longer [able to] use their gifts or exercise their responsibilities well.”[13]
12. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 40.
13. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 98.
VanDrunen understands the Noahic covenant to modify the “protological” (original) natural law from creation: “[T]he natural law did not consist of static deontological[14] principles but was a moral order by which God normatively oriented human beings for a creatively fruitful life in exercising righteous royal dominion in this world toward the eschatalogical goal.”[15] This leads him to claim, “A natural law meant to direct beings toward a goal [i.e., new creation] could not continue to obligate them in identical ways if they attained the goal. Presumably, God designed natural law to be consummated along with the consummation of human nature and creation as a whole.”[16]
14. Deontological is a word derived from the Greek “deon” (duty) and “logos” (logic/science). In moral theory it is the position that emphasizes the relationship between duty and morality in human actions.
According to VanDrunen, upon completion of the divine assignment (i.e. the covenant of works), as his reward, God would have set this created order aside and Adam would have been placed in the new creation. However, due to sin, VanDrunen argues that “human beings are not bound by the creation mandate in its original Adamic form but in its modified Noahic form.”[17] This is because “God established the postdiluvian Noahic covenant with all of creation and thus the entire human race . . . this natural law is in organic continuity with the natural law of the original creation, but as refracted through the covenant with Noah.”[18]
15. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 95.
16. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 95.
VanDrunen argues the Noahic covenant therefore stands as the lone covenant that can account for God’s universal reign until the new heavens and new earth. He claims, “From a New Testament perspective, the Noahic covenant’s lease expires when Christ returns and institutes the final judgment, by fire rather than water (see 2 Pet. 3:10–13). Thus God pledges to preserve human society and the broader world only until the date of judgment and new creation.”[19]
17. David VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 65.
18. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 96.
When it comes to the dominion mandate (Gen. 1:26–28), VanDrunen is clear that man both ontologically and functionally is the image of God, meaning that “exercising dominion was not something tacked on to image-bearing: to exercise dominion is part of the very nature of bearing the image.”[20]] Or as he adds elsewhere, “[T]he commission to rule is not a distant implication of image-bearing but of its essence.”[21]
19. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 64.
20. VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 39, emphasis mine.
With language like this, one might assume VanDrunen would argue that taking dominion and ruling over creation is an irreducible component of human nature. However, using a biblical-theological methodology in formulating his anthropology, combined with this protological/eschatalogical schema, VanDrunen concludes “that [Genesis] 9:1–7 republishes the original creation mandate in modified form . . . the Noahic covenant envisions no completion of the dominion task and attainment of an eschatological state.”[22] Thus, for VanDrunen, the Noahic covenant modifies human nature/natural law due to the corruption of sin. He contends that the Noahic covenant “holds out no hope of attaining a perfect and lasting peace, only of avoiding a war of all against all. The dominion Noah’s descendants can achieve is but a shadow of the dominion Adam was supposed to achieve.”[23]
21. VanDrunen, Politics After Christendom, 59.
22. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 119.
The problem with VanDrunen’s logic is that it plucks the Noahic covenant out of the organic continuity it shares within the biblical storyline. It cordons it off from the story of God’s redemption in a manner foreign to how the Bible itself speaks of God’s arrangement with Noah. Whereas VanDrunen understands the Noahic covenant to be exclusively common/universal and therefore pluralistic due to the reality that fallen humanity rebels against God and is prone to false worship, I believe that we must understand there to be both common and redemptive elements in the Noahic covenant.
23. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 119.
24. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 13–14.
Keeping the Covenants Together
25. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 99. Interestingly, within the Reformed tradition, there has been disagreement over whether the Noahic covenant is common or redemptive. I think both camps are right, as there are common/universal and particular/redemptive components in all God’s covenants.
VanDrunen is convinced that by injecting the theological vocabulary of the Reformed tradition with his rather novel take on the Noahic covenant we can have a truly “common” ethic for all mankind, “without identifying natural law ethics with a uniquely Christian ethics.”[24] Now, to be clear, I concur with VanDrunen’s assessment that the Reformed tradition has often misunderstood and/or underemphasized the role of the Noahic covenant in natural law discussions.[25] This, I believe, directly flows from covenant theologians reading too quickly New Testament realities back into the Old Testament without rightly following the Bible’s covenantal progression. We must read each covenant on its own terms and in keeping with its placement within the biblical storyline. As Stephen Wellum reminds us, “By tracing out the covenants in this fashion, we are able to see how the entire plan of God is organically related and how it reaches its culmination and fulfillment in Christ . . . we will rightly see how the parts of God’s plan fit with the whole.”[26]
26. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 657.
However, unlike VanDrunen, I have zero interest in developing a natural law ethic that is not uniquely Christian, as this logic assumes Christianity competes with the common good (which is the goal of natural law). In other words, natural law directly flows from nature’s God, and this God is the triune God who has spoken the world into existence (Gen 1:1–3; John 1:3). As John declares, the Word (i.e., the Divine Logos) was with God and was God and became flesh (John 1:14). This Word is none other than Jesus Christ, and any natural law theory worthy of its name must therefore be Christocentric. Otherwise, such a theory is at best plagiarizing against the Lawgiver by not properly citing the Creator of creation/nature. Moreover, living in accord with God’s natural law is the pathway to human flourishing, and since Christ is the supreme good, Christianity therefore compels humanity to our common good. I am confident VanDrunen would agree with this sentiment in principle, but his theological arguments do not align with this vision of reality.
Frankly, I believe VanDrunen’s ambition to develop a more inclusive or pluralistic natural law theory from the Noahic covenant reveals why his protological/eschatalogical and common/special framework is inherently flawed. As I will pinpoint in the next section, this flaw is due to a misunderstanding of how nature, grace, and sin relate to each other, because it makes sin out to require a modification of human nature and law via covenant. While he seems to assume the Noahic covenant promotes pluralism in principle as an expression of common grace post-fall, I contend that the Noahic covenant promotes the One Noah typifies, the One who would come to make his blessings known as far as the curse is found. God’s patience as instituted and sustained in the Noahic covenant is for the purpose of saving his elect, not for the promotion of a “natural law” and/or “common ethic” devoid of Christ (2 Pet. 3:3–10).
27. See Stephen Wellum’s chapter “Progressive Covenantalism and the Doing of Ethics” in Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course Between Dispensational and Covenant Theologies, ed. Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016), for a Progressive Covenantalist understanding of the Decalogue and coming to a better conclusion about morality.
Similar to VanDrunen, I want to emphasize the universal and abiding nature of the Noahic covenant as opposed to the exclusive-to-Israel and temporal nature of the Mosaic Law (including the Decalogue) in formulating a right understanding of moral order.[27] In Genesis 9:16 God explicitly refers to his arrangement with Noah as an “everlasting covenant.” Many years later—when the Mosaic covenant was still active—the prophet Isaiah proclaims judgment oracles against foreign nations (Isaiah 13–27). In Isaiah 24:5–6 the prophet writes, “The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the covenants, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.” Peter Gentry makes the following comment on this passage:
28. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 206.
Since the reference is to all humans breaking the ‘everlasting covenant,’ the Mosaic covenant given to Israel at Sinai is hardly in view. The most probable referent is the covenant made with Noah . . . Isaiah’s oracle predicts the complete desolation of the earth because its people have violated the instructions and terms of the Noahic covenant.[28]
29. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 687.
This special revelation in the form of a law-covenant with Noah demands accountability from all mankind “as long as the earth remains” (Gen. 8:22); something that VanDrunen is also rightly fond of pointing out. As Wellum articulates, “[T]he Noahic covenant and thus creation order and its various God-given structures (e.g., human dignity, a proper use of our sexuality, monogamous heterosexual marriage, the family, work) continue to the consummation.”[29] Moreover, as Gentry highlights, “[W]hen God says that he is affirming or establishing his covenant with Noah, he is saying that his commitment initiated previously at creation to care for and preserve, provide for, and rule over all that he has made, including the blessings and ordinances that he gave to Adam and Even and their family, is now to be with Noah and his descendants.”[30]
30. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 195.
So in agreement with VanDrunen, a Progressive Covenantalist would affirm, “In Noah, the covenant reminds us that God’s purposes encompass not just one people but all nations and the entire creation . . . despite their narrowing focus in later covenants . . . the scope of the Noahic covenant [is as] wide as the creation covenant.”[31] But where we differ is that we would maintain the Noahic covenant is inseparably linked with the other biblical covenants in God’s promise of redemption and restoration. It is not merely a temporary stopgap for sin in order to preserve the first creation until the return of Christ, or even a mere shadow of what God offered Adam, but it brims with the promise and hope of Genesis 3:15. Even more, through the Noahic covenant God upholds the now sin-cursed created order while using it as the platform upon which his grand plan of salvation comes to fulfillment.
31. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 686.
Noah stands as a second Adam, typifying the Last Adam, and God’s covenant with him is the arrangement through which the promised seed of the woman would be born. Following the Noahic covenant God separates Noah’s descendents at the Tower of Babel, and the nations which form out of this divine action are guided by Noahic justice (Isa. 24:1–5). This provides the backdrop into which God would send forth his Son in the fullness of time born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Gal 4:4–5).
I do not believe the Noahic covenant is nearly as modest as VanDrunen claims. When read rightly within the context of a whole-Bible theology, his argument that it “holds out no hope of attaining a perfect and lasting peace, only of avoiding a war of all against all” is insufficient.[32] We must not confuse less revelation in word count for a thinner conception of morality or human accountability before God. As the saying goes, sound theology does not merely count words, it must weigh them. I believe VanDrunen falls prey to this fundamental hermeneutical blunder with how he interprets and applies the Noahic covenant.
32. VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 119.
Sin’s Effect on Creation/Nature
There is a specter of antinomianism in VanDrunen’s system. I make this claim due to his teaching that the natural/moral law is a moving target that is essentially covenantally customizable. If what is moral or natural is modifiable, this insinuates that God’s character is likewise mutable, because the law of God is God himself as it reflects his very nature.[33] If God’s law is modifiable, then God is too, and if he alters reality and the rules throughout the biblical storyline, what confidence can we have that he will indeed hold true to his word? Rather than suggest the Noahic covenant modifies the original mandate given to mankind, I believe the Noahic covenant is the first covenant given in God’s grand plan of redemption from sin as he moves all of history towards the one Noah foreshadows, the Lord Jesus Christ.
33. See Stephen Wellum, “The Law of God,” The Gospel Coaliation, accessed on July 21, 2023. As Bavinck explains, “The law, after all, is an expression of God’s being.” Reformed Dogmatics, 4:455.
Now, to be clear, VanDrunen is most certainly correct to point out that the Noahic covenant is given in a post-fall world, and there are distinctions between it and the original covenant of creation due to sin. The reality that the opening verses of Genesis 9 emphasize the threat animals now pose to humans and the need for the death penalty captures the destruction and chaos sin brings to creation. But this is where keeping covenant separate from nature is once again important, so that we avoid the error VanDrunen makes regarding moral law.
34. As Van Til rightly explains, “The nearest we can come to an explanation is to say that evil is a negation, that nothing positive is created. Evil is no substance but the marring of substance.” Evil and Theodicy, https://www.monergism.com/evil-and-theodicy-ebook. In other words, evil is not a positive creation/substance, but a lack of the good. To suggest that sin requires the refraction or modification of a calling inherent to our nature as humans would render us less than human. Which goes patently against VanDrunen’s desire to maintain humanity retains the image of God post-fall.
I would argue that a key distinction between Progressive Covenantalism and VanDrunen’s understanding of the divine covenants, is that I/we do not conflate covenant and nature and thereby we do not make nature covenantally mediated and therefore modifiable. Now, to be clear, I am claiming nothing new in saying this, as this is the majority view within the Reformed tradition. I am in good company when claiming that the covenant of creation/works ratifies the inherent goodness and immutability of nature. Sin is privative, not substantive,[34] therefore nature ought not be conceived of as “refracted” or modified due to the entrance of sin.[35] To say that the dominion mandate is part of the very “nature” and “essence” of the image of God and that sin leads to a rescinding of this mandate via the Noahic covenant (as VanDrunen does) would seem to render humanity as no longer bearing God’s image, which I know he does not desire to communicate. The corruption of sin does indeed affect every aspect of our humanity, yet corruption/privation must not be understood to rescind (or require a covenantal modification of) that which is in keeping with human nature.
35. As Peter Martyr Vermigli helpfully explains, “Evil is a lack [privatio], I mean of goodness; not all of goodness but of such a good as is required for the perfection of the creature, which I say belongs to the perfection of the subject that is corrupted . . . As a privation, evil cannot exist without a good, for it must have a subject. Since a subject is a substance [natura], it is good; so evil can exist only in some good—blindness is a deprivation of sight; it does not hang in the air, but stays in the eye.” Philosophical Works: On the Relation of Philosophy to Theology (Moscow, ID: Davenant Press, 2018), 223.
Sin can only limit the realization of the dominion mandate in practice, not principle. Therefore, I would suggest that the Noahic covenant does not refract human nature/law, nor does it remove the dominion mandate, instead it ratifies God’s previous covenant with Adam/mankind.[36] It also amplifies the reality that while the effects of sin (i.e., thorns and thistles, labor pains, marital strife, etc.) complicate God’s calling for those he creates in his image to rule over creation, it cannot alter man’s nature. A covenant cannot alter such a calling that is inherently tied to human nature and dignity. VanDrunen loses more than he seems to realize with such claims.
The Noahic Covenant Ratifies and Preserves God’s Created Order, and Gives Assurance that He Will Save All His Elect
36. See Gentry on this point, Kingdom Through Covenant, 187–195.
The Noahic covenant is certainly a common grace covenant which preserves civil order in a post-fall world, but it is more than this.[37] Since neither sin nor covenant can alter man’s nature, I would suggest that the Noahic covenant is not rightly understood as a concession to the curse of sin, but as a promise that sin can by no means thwart God’s purposes for creation. When understood on its own terms within the flow of the biblical storyline, it is a reaffirmation of God’s intentions for humanity. Despite sin, God will ensure that those he made in his image will spread out across the earth, and that one day the knowledge of him will cover the earth as waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).
37. As Bavinck explains, “The traditions of paradise, the life of Cain and his descendents, and the covenant with Noah have a special, supernatural origin. The working of supernatural forces in the world of the heathen is neither impossible nor improbable. Furthermore, the revelation of God in nature and history is never a mere passive pouring forth of God’s virtues but is always a positive act on the part of God. The Father of Jesus works always (John 5:17). His providence is a divine, eternal, omnipresent power.” “Common Grace,” trans. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, in Calvin Theological Journal, 24, no. 1 (1989): 41.
Earlier I cited VanDrunen’s argument that “the Noahic covenant’s lease expires when Christ returns and institutes the final judgment, by fire rather than water” (2 Pet. 3:10–13). I appreciate and resonate with his desire to connect 2 Peter 3 with the Noahic covenant, because Peter explicitly does so (2 Pet. 3:6–7). But what I believe he overlooks in this 2 Peter passage is the clear connection between Noah and God’s salvation of his elect. Peter teaches us just prior to the verses VanDrunen cites: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you” (2 Pet. 3:9). It is crucial that we note the “you” is plural here, and “toward you” would be better translated “on your account.” In other words, Peter is teaching us that the reason the Lord Jesus has not yet been “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel” (2 Thess. 1:7-8) is because God is committed to fulfilling his promise to save all his elect. Therefore, the Noahic covenant is not merely a common grace covenant, preserving creation until Christ’s return, it also reveals to us the steadfast love and patience of Yahweh towards his saints.[38]
38. For further study notice how the Noahic covenant is used to give certainty to God’s other promises see Jeremiah 31:36; 33:17–26; Isaiah 54:9; 2 Peter 2:5.
Conclusion
In this essay I have sought to draw out VanDrunen’s biblical-theological presuppositions from the opening chapters of Genesis. Specifically, I have highlighted his understanding of key theological concepts such as covenant and nature. Unfortunately, by making covenant and nature out to be interchangeable concepts, his conclusions that nature and law are covenantally mediated and modifiable implicates God’s character and denigrates human nature.
I instead argue that covenant is the means by which God offers humanity the ultimate realization of their nature. The Noahic covenant does not refract human nature and therefore the dominion mandate or natural law. Rather, I contend the Noahic covenant ratifies God’s previous covenant with Adam, preserves created order by curbing the effects of sin on creation, and reaffirms God’s indomitable commitment to save his people.